KIRKUS REVIEW

Grisly account of unsolved murders
in a small Louisiana town.

New Orleans–based investigative
reporter Brown (Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder that Rocked New Orleans,
2009, etc.) spent two years unraveling the stories behind the impoverished,
addicted sex workers murdered in hardscrabble Jennings, Louisiana. While media
and police inflated fears of a serial killer, the author argues the murders
resulted from collusion between corrupt law enforcement and drug dealers,
seeking to punish the women for informing. “It should have been obvious all
along,” he writes, “that the Jeff Davis 8 killings were not the handiwork of a
serial killer…[since they] all knew one another intimately.” Brown focuses on Frankie
Richard, an aging pimp whom the author interviewed extensively; although
Richard proclaims his innocence, Brown documents connections among him, the
victims, and cops who conveniently mishandled evidence against him. His
portrait of law enforcement is damning, identifying powerful officials “who
were accustomed to maintaining inappropriately intimate connections with those
on the wrong side of the law.” Although a task force was launched in response
to public anger, Brown accuses them of ineptitude and misconduct; in one
startling example, an investigator bought, cleaned, and resold a truck that may
have been used in one murder. The author views these seamy details as congruent
with a culture of police violence and a regional underground of drugs and
criminality that treats such women as disposable; distressingly, the victims
themselves seemed to concur, with the mother of one noting, “I think she could
feel that they were closing in on her.” Brown’s writing is clear and
approachable, and his research is meticulous, even as locals grew hostile
toward his investigation (his final chapters argue connections to political
figures beyond Jennings). Although he presents few concrete answers to these
mysteries, readers will be shaken by the unpleasant implications of a narrative
bearing similarities to the first season of True
Detective.

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